Super Pi Single Core Vs Multicore

The Super Pi is a classical program used to benchmark the processor. It Calculates the time it takes to calculate the value of Pi upto a given number of digits.

The Super Pi is however made for a single threaded application. We captured the CPU usage screen while running the Super Pi program on the Intel’s Core 2 Duo P7350 ( 2.0 GHz) with 3 GB of memory. While running the program, we hit Ctrl+Alt+Del and captured the screen of the Windows Task manager. Here is how it looks like.

It is clear that, while the first processor was almost fully utilized, the second processor was underutilized. The minor blip is the usage of the second processor was when the Print Screen Button was pressed. It just goes on to show that the two processor is still useful. As an example if you are running the virus check in background, you should not find opening other programs sluggish.

The super pi program beckons the need change – it should be able to leverage the multi threading / multi processing capability of the computer. It should potentially create two threads that can run in parallel.